A dual octave effect with unique crossfade/pan style control

Hungry Robot Pedals has just announced a new polyphonic octave pedal intriguingly called The Monastery. This new dual-preset effect is the latest in the boutique builder’s effects line-up and launches officially on 1st August.

Octave Generator

The Monastery is billed as a dual preset, polyphonic octave generator – now that’s a lot of information all in one hit. The Monastery is divided into two distinct octave effects and both sides are indeed polyphonic, so this will handle chords and other, more complex signals.

I am big fan of Hungry Robot Pedals and their Moby Dick tap-tempo delay has lived in the effects loop of my Friedman amp for well over a year now. For me, the sound – which is somewhere in the analogue delay meets tape delay realm – and ease of use are two of the big draws to this unit. If the Monastery follows suit, then I can see it being very musical and intuitive to use.

Thankfully, the company has already uploaded some seriously good demos of The Monastery pedal and so you can probably judge straight away if it is for you or not.

Unity

An octave Up and Down effects are accessed via crossfade/pan arrangement, rather than the more traditional three-knob layout of ‘Dry, Up and Down’ which you often see on other octaver units. This seems to me a more intuitive arrangement for the controls. Hopefully the Monastery does not suffer from volume drops and stays at unity gain, no matter how you set controls.

Two sets of controls are on offer, one for each side. The Dry/Wet controls how much of the effect is blended with your dry signal and the +/- control the ratio of the octave up and down effect, as explained above.

Dual

Two foot switches are incorporated here, one to toggle effect on and off whilst the other switches between the two sides of the octave effect. This allows the user to set up two presets and switch easily between them. An LED lets you know which octave setting is active: when lit, the top row of controls are active, when not, you are on the bottom row of controls. The bottom LED between the foot switches lets you know that the effect is engaged.